For commuters with visual impairment, navigating a busy bus interchange or MRT station can be difficult.

Local public transport operator SBS Transit is piloting an app to help these commuters find their way around safely and independently.

The app is the product of a collaboration between SBS Transit and UK navigation tech company Waymap.

Called Waymap-SG, this app has pre-mapped facilities such as boarding/alighting berths, train concourse/platform, escalators, lifts, shops and toilets.

The app will guide users with audio cues at each turn, calibrating itself according to the user's walking speed and gait.

The app works both indoors and outdoors.

Waymap-SG relies on phone sensors; there is no need for GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth signals.

Josh Tseng, an executive committee board member at the Singapore Association of the Visually Handicapped, praised the app for its ease of use.

Tseng, who lives with visual impairment, said:

"Most importantly, it gives us people with vision impairment the opportunity to venture outside by ourselves. It gives us dignity."

Pilot at Tampines

For a start, the app will be piloted at Tampines Bus Interchange and Tampines MRT Station on the Downtown Line.

Guide Dogs Singapore, which is joining the trial as a pilot user, said that it intends to combine the use of Waymap-SG into its training to "enhance wayfinding and mobility for our clients".

If you are keen to give the app a try, you can download the Android version here and the Apple version here.

It is free to download but do note that not all phones are compatible:

• Only iPhone 7 and above
• Samsung (Galaxy 8 and more recent)
• Google Pixel (3a and more recent)

SBS Transit also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Waymap on Oct. 10 to co-create other innovative smartphone navigation solutions, for a more inclusive public transport system.

All images courtesy of SBS Transit.